Sharing a passion

A young volunteer at Romulus Whitakers Agumbe research station overcomes his fear and touches a vine snake.-PICTURES: BY SPECIAL ARRANGEMENT

MOJI RIBA, the 37-year-old film-maker and cultural anthropologist, and Romulus Whitaker, the 65-year-old herpetologist and wildlife conservationist, have undertaken two different journeys in two vastly different worlds, but their common goal is conservation. They were both present in New Delhi in January to receive the 13th edition of the Rolex Awards for Enterprise 2008. Riba has been documenting the oral traditions of 26 tribal communities in his home State of Arunachal Pradesh, while Whitaker has been working to save Indias endangered reptiles and their biomes, especially the rainforests.

Whitaker, an Indian citizen of American origin, can be best described as an unconventional conservationist. An American boy reared in Indias wild places, he has achieved scientific renown for coordinating efforts to save critically endangered reptiles such as the king cobra and the gharial. He realised early enough that for snakes, and other animal species he loved, to survive, their fast depleting habitats had to be protected. Thus began the evolution of a naturalist into a conservationist. A lot of us get wrapped up in our own little special animal, and then we wake up and start thinking it has got to be habitat and it has to be eco-development that involves people, and, now, in my case, it has crystallised into the whole idea of water resources, he says.

This seemingly relaxed attitude belies the original thinking and careful planning behind his many conservation projects. His current project, for which he has been chosen as an Associate Laureate in the 2008 Rolex Awards, is to create a network of rainforest research stations across India. The idea of the rainforest research stations has been with me absolutely forever, but I didnt have the wherewithal to do anything about it. Then all these things started falling into place over the last few years. My mother died and she left some money, enough to buy this block of land [at Agumbe in Karnataka, since this is where he spotted his first king cobra in the 1970s] we had talked about before her death. Then the Whitley Award for Nature [in 2005] came along and helped set up the Agumbe Rainforest Research Station and get it working really well.

Whitakers latest enterprise concentrates on building on the limited knowledge of Indias rainforests and demonstrates the importance of their water resources. The Agumbe research station, set up in 2005 and now a fully functional research, conservation and education centre, is the first of seven research stations that will connect the remaining rainforests throughout India.

The Agumbe station itself consists of living and working quarters purpose-built to function during the monsoon and to be self-sufficient in renewable energy. The base has hosted dozens of Indian researchers, journalists and naturalists. But its mission extends beyond science. It is the springboard for local conservation, including sustainable use of minor forest produce and medicinal plants.

Whitaker understands the impact of the depletion of resources very well and knows that the project he has in mind would not be complete if he does not address the environmental problem in a holistic way. This includes not only conserving endangered reptiles and wildlife but sensitising people regarding the outcome of their negligent actions.

He recalls, The people living in the Western Ghats rainforests were used to killing any king cobra, but after we got them involved in our conservation programme, they have not only stopped killing them but also see to it that the snakes get a proper environment to grow. Initially they were very suspicious, but now they have become valuable informers about the cobras presence in the forests. People start believing in us once they see that we, being outsiders, value their lands, their forests. Its, in a way, like worshipping their icons. The station has educated hundreds of schoolchildren about the importance of forests. Children are a bit shaky about going into the forest at first, but fascination with what we show them soon gets them hooked, Whitaker says.

Whitakers major concern is the depleting water resources. Water shortage will dwarf many of our present problems. The rainforests of India are the origins of all the major rivers in the South and the North-East. The rivers of the Western Ghats provide water to about a third of Indias population. And we also need to save rainwater, which is in abundance there, he says.

However, the indiscriminate pace of mining in the region and the land mafias who take advantage of peoples ignorance by luring them to sell forest resources and land cheap make him wary. Although he advocates a satisfactory translocation of forest dwellers as part of forest conservation, he is concerned about the bad record of the Indian government in compensating displaced people.

Author of eight books, over 150 articles and 23 well-acclaimed documentary films on environment, including the National Geographic film King Cobra, Whitaker has inspired many a young naturalist in the region. In 1984, for his project to help the indigenous Irula people of Tamil Nadu make the transition from their old trade, of catching snakes for the now-banned skin trade, to collecting snake venom to produce life-saving anti-venom serum, he became one of the founder directors of the snake park in Guindy, Chennai. Whitaker is now the Director of the Madras Crocodile Bank, an outfit run by a trust.

The other recipient of the Rolex Award, Moji Riba shunned a comfortable life after passing out of the Mass Communication Research Centre (MCRC) in 1997. For him, the culture of his State is like a wonderful shawl woven in myriad colours and patterns. It is this understanding of the diversity and richness of the heritage of Arunachal Pradesh that made Riba determined not to allow the colours to fade in the chaos of modernity.

A member of the Galo tribe, Riba has devised an ambitious plan to enlist youth belonging to 26 tribes to document the States customs and beliefs. He set up the Centre for Cultural Research and Documentation (CCRD) in 1997 in Itanagar as most of the heritage of Arunachal Pradesh exists in oral traditions. The [written] text could not be ever possible as all the 26 tribes had very different lifestyles and very distinct cultures of their own, he says. Riba is concerned that the older generation holds the last link to the storehouse of the indigenous knowledge systems and that the death of every elderly person in a village amounts to the loss of a part of the cultural heritage. The CCRD team has made 35 documentaries for national television channels and for government and non-governmental agencies. It also serves as a platform for the tribal people to voice their concerns and share their experiences.

Realising the limitations of standard methods to chronicle a culture in a state of flux, Riba has launched the Mountain Eye Project. The aim is to create a cinematic time capsule documenting a year in the lives of at least 15 different ethnic groups, to begin with. In view of the diversity of the tribes, the filming would be done by representatives from each tribe who would be trained by Riba himself. The data thus collected would be organised in a publicly accessible database by scholars at the University of Itanagar.

It is my hope that these outreach activities will inculcate in children and the youth an appreciation of their cultural heritage and help them make sense of their ancestry, their identity, says Riba. This reasoning is the outcome of a keen observation of the changing culture of Arunachal Pradesh following economic development and improved communications. The gradual renunciation of animist beliefs for mainstream religions threatens Arunachals colourful traditions. The risk of many of these cultures disappearing in a generation is particularly great as almost the entire body of local wisdom from religious chants to tribal histories, from love songs to agricultural rituals exists today only in the oral tradition, he says.

He believes that the onslaught of economic globalisation has ushered in a consumerist culture leading to a homogenous identity. In Arunachal, there was never a single identity. In fact, our identities as Indians were modulated by the British first when they grouped us into one region called the North-East Frontier Tract. In post-Independence India, the Ministry of External Affairs governed us under the same administrative territory but by the name of North-East Frontier Agency until 1972 when it became a Union Territory by the present name. But this Indianness was never at the cost of our tribal identities. But development is threatening the tribal identities, Riba points out.

Realising that there is only a thin line between cultural conservation and cultural fascism in the contemporary political circumstances, he says that by attempting to archive the traditions he is not countering the changes but is, in a way, trying to balance them out. It is not my place to denounce this change or to counter it. What I am trying to say is that most of the youngsters speak in either Hindi or English now, with the help of modern and universal education. Arunachal Pradesh, being so culturally diverse, is on its way to losing its identity. I am not against different traditions coming into the State because of modernisation, but I am against homogeneity of culture. I dont see a conflict between the global and the local, but through my projects I am trying to say that both can coexist without one appropriating the other or without any conflict. I wish development happens through the prism of culture, Riba says.

Riba just wants to be an activist who triggers a thought process, and so does Whitaker. Whitaker says, Good conservation is based on good science. And so does Riba, but about social science. Both are trying to balance out the positive and negative effects of development and both think that this progress is not sustainable.